The Little Princess: "My Bangladesh" Photo Series (6)

“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.”

(Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "The Little Prince")

Lalbagh Fort, Old Dhaka. Dhaka, 17 February 2020

Today is Monday and there is a lot of sun. My best friends and I decided to come and visit Lalbagh Fort after school. But it's almost 12 and the gates are still closed, uff! But when does it open? There are many people here waiting, they say they open at two o'clock.

Oh well, in the end I am with my friends and we have fun, and it is full of people and tourists. We laugh and joke.

Nothing, the gate is always closed, the rickshaw and CNGs never stop run on the dusty road, along the walls of the Fort.

I don't mind waiting, it's our day—me and my friends.

Oh, how many tourists! I don't understand a word, they also wait in front of the closed gate: it's sure, it is not that they can enter before us. Me and my friends have a lot of fun seeing these strange faces.

Wah! This girl speaks Bangla but has a face... I don't understand... She smiles at us, are we beautiful?

“But, are you Bengali?” “Yes? Really?”

My friends and I look at each other and laugh. She looks like Chinese, but she really speaks Bangla. There is an elderly man with her, with a huge camera in his hand, all white, perhaps Englishman. What do I know! But he smiles a lot. He tells us that she is a Marma... Wow, the white Englishman speaks a little Bangla, even if he speaks very badly. Understood, understood, you from Chittagong. Never been there.

Today is truly a special morning, already since at the school desks we counted the hours to run out and come here. I am very happy, with my best friends, waiting to enter Lalbagh for the first time, among so many people, and I am also talking to a foreigner. Oh my God, speaking no, but we laugh a lot…

Oh, what are you doing? Are you taking a picture of us? What a shame!! Selfie selfie...

And, oh well, take the picture. In any case, we have to wait here. Maybe he will put us on the cover of a magazine like the stars, or we go on television. You know how happy my mom could be! Oh, another photo, what an embarrassment. Now the other girls in a row are also looking at us, pointing at us. Thank goodness, I'm not alone. Otherwise I am already running away.

Well? What are you doing now? Why do you photograph my feet? That’s ridiculous! But, who is he photographing? Whose feet? Hey, he points at me! My friends tap my elbow and giggle. But, is he out of his mind?!

Now he smiles at me. He may be white Englishman, but he is crazy like the monkeys that I always see in my village.

What's wrong with my shoes? Or maybe he likes my colored nails. It took me one evening to paint them like this. My mom loved them. Yes, I know, the color has already gone a little away, but try to walk the streets of Dhaka!

And these are my most beautiful velvet shoes I have as my birthday present last year. How many jumps of joy I made when they gave them to me. Don't look at them now! They are dusty, but because the road is dirty, and near the house I have to walk in the red soil. They break many bricks near my house. It's not my fault. But if they are dusted, they turn black like mum's hair. The only thing that makes me sad is to have lost a bright stone in the right shoe, how much I cried when I noticed it. I also tried to find it everywhere, going back on the road I had passed, but nothing, impossible.

Bangladesh, February 2020

I find nothing strange in my feet, in my nails with two colors, in the anklets and in my beautiful gorgeous shoes.

Why? Only models can have elegant velvet shoes like mine? Only actresses can color nails?

Can't I be a princess? In fact, I am a queen, a fairy, a butterfly!

There is nothing strange, pumpkin-head photographer! Each of us can be princesses, even me and my friends from primary school. Even if my house is small and many of us live in it, and when it rains hard, water drips from the roof. Even though my shoes are now dusty.

Today is our special morning, the gates will open shortly and we will walk all over the park. We also have the right to be princesses. At least for this morning.

 

Italian version